It’s surely the blackest comedy to ever grace the stage of the Peacock at the Abbey. Imagine hating someone because they’re a different religion.

Imagine despising them so much that you want to murder them. Oh wait......This co-production with London’s Royal Court Theatre by David Ireland is a wry look at the sectarian hatred that defines Northern Ireland’s past and tore society apart.

It’s a satirical sketch of decades of divide and baseless hatred.

There’s no doubt the play is hilarious, but so disturbing that you feel guilty even laughing, and as black as black comedies go.

Chris Corrigan is side-splittingly funny as Loyalist paramilitary Slim and his exchanges with Eric are comedy gold.

But the audience ends up wondering if they’re laughing because it’s funny or laughing because it’s so uncomfortable.

Eric is without doubt a bigot, but he’s also battling some sort of extreme paranoid schizophrenia, isn’t he?

Or is the sectarian hatred that riddled the North like a cancer tantamount to mental illness?

Cyprus Avenue turns out to be a terrifying but compelling look into the dark and murky depths of the human mind and the lengths people will go - and worse, have gone - to when they feel their identity is under threat.